Below you will see two polls that ask about your confidence in the Tampa Bay Rays. We will present these same polls every Tuesday. The results will be presented in graphical form on Thursday, and will be displayed permanently in the sidebar. The goal of the Confidence Graph is to get a feeling of how Rays fans feel about the team and the franchise and track how that level of confidence changes through time.

Raysiverse events of the past week that could impact confidence levels…

DBF-Im not Cork lol (no kidding right?) do you think Reid has shown enough with the stick to even merit consideration for a corner OF spot? I think Brigs is our future 2b when we move Iwamura in a season or 2... I personally think he has a long way to go with is batting eye, and definately needs another full season at AAA.

I think we're a legit DH and RFer with power away from me to be able to vote anything higher than '7' for the 09 Rays. The Yankees could be scary good with all the loot they're going to spend this offseason....the RS and Jays will be right there as well obviously.

not good. this is something i was higher on at the beginning of the season as we were looking forward. but 2 things happened.

1. Brignac showed that he can be a solid major league shortstop

2. his bat didn't

he strikes out a lot (93 in 97 games), which wouldn't be so bad except he never walks (only 25 this season, off the top of my head). His OBP the last 2 seasons is only about .315.

he really needs at least a half-season at Durham to work on his command of the strikezone.

Kyle's idea is something i have tossed out there before and makes sense. Aki is only signed through 2010. great glove. decent bat. and cheap. the Rays could look to move Aki after the season and let Brignac take his spot. He played 2nd base 4 times this past season. would knock about $4M off the payroll for 2010 and assuming Perez is in the OF by then, Maddon would no longer need Aki to lead off.

Prof - First of all, that was a pretty short break. I guess you must have gotten over the loss the Phillies. Take solace in realizing that the Rays won the AL East – the most challenging division in the MLB. After that, sorry it is still pretty much of a crapshoot. However, I would still say the ALCS was quite an accomplishment.

Request - can you change the confidence measure device back into something meaningful, please? I prefer previous system where there were levels based upon accomplishments (in hunt for playoffs all season, will make playoffs, will win WS, will be considered too powerful and thus disbanded by Bud to “preserve the integrity of baseball.” ) Etc.

Also, since ballplayers can’t gamble, do you think players should be allowed participate in fantasy baseball leagues?

I, too, would like some meaning assigned to the numbers, although I maintain that there is a disconnect between voting for how well we are playing and where we are in the standings. With the likely Yankee spending spree and continued Red Sox excellence, we could be playing as good as anyone in the league all year and finish third. So are we talking about level of play or results? Because I have much more confidence in the former.

the problems with have each value assigned is that it removes the emotional element, and i want this to be as much about how the fans "feel" about the team. in other words, it is easy to look at the standings in September and see they are a "playoff contender". but in reality the Rays were not playing like a playoff contender for most of the month.

also, those definitions obviously would need to change at different times of the year. if i say "how are they playing right now" that means nothing in the offseason. and if i change the meaning of each level during the course of the season then that takes away from the true purpose of the graph and that is to see how confidence changes over time.

so the best way to approach it is to let each voter define the numbers in their own way. chances are that will stay consistent over time. so while a "7" to one person will be the same as a "6" to somebody else, the change over time should be consistent.